The Interplanetary Network (IPN) or the Interplanetary Internet is a network composed of interconnected space objects, which are in turn connected to mission control stations on the surface of Earth. The IPN is our only portal to the deep space, and yet it has been relatively sparse, until recently. With the ongoing and the planned missions to the outer space, the Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) based network infrastructure will require more scalable routing and scheduling algorithms. In this paper, we propose the first Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model for message routing and scheduling in the IPN using Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) principles. Based on this model, we propose a novel MADM-based algorithm called Multi-Attribute Routing and Scheduling (MARS) algorithm. This algorithm uses a sliding window of size $n$ to schedule the first $n$ messages in the buffer based on multiple attributes. After finding the optimal schedule for these messages (in terms of delivery rate), they are routed using our proposed Dijkstra-based routing algorithm. We use an existing MADM technique, PROMETHEE II, and consider the four main attributes of a message: size, priority, time to live (TTL), and time in buffer (TiB). Finally, we run multiple simulation experiments in order to test the performance of the proposed MARS and show that MADM coupled with scheduling and routing in IPN delivers at least three times more messages than a previously proposed technique, the Contact Graph Routing (CGR), while significantly reducing the average end-to-end delay and overhead.

中文翻译：

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MARS：DTN行星际网络的多属性路由和调度算法

星际网络（IPN）或星际互联网是由相互连接的空间物体组成的网络，这些空间物体又与地球表面的任务控制站相连。IPN是我们通往深空的唯一门户，但是直到最近，它还是相对稀疏的。随着正在进行中和计划中的外太空任务，基于延迟容忍网络（DTN）的网络基础架构将需要更多可扩展的路由和调度算法。在本文中，我们提出了第一个使用多属性决策（MADM）原理在IPN中进行消息路由和调度的混合整数线性规划（MILP）模型。基于此模型，我们提出了一种新颖的基于MADM的算法，称为多属性路由和调度（MARS）算法。该算法使用大小为1的滑动窗口 $ n $ 安排第一个 $ n $ 缓冲区中基于多个属性的消息。在找到这些消息的最佳调度（按照传送速率）之后，使用我们提出的基于Dijkstra的路由算法对它们进行路由。我们使用现有的MADM技术PROMETHEE II，并考虑消息的四个主要属性：大小，优先级，生存时间（TTL）和缓冲时间（TiB）。最后，我们进行了多次仿真实验，以测试所提出的MARS的性能，结果表明，与IPN中的调度和路由相结合的MADM所传递的消息至少比先前提出的技术（联系图路由（CGR））多三倍。大大减少了平均的端到端延迟和开销。